AIRCARE MA Whole-House Console-Style Evaporative Humidifier (Console)

Attention Guitarist…I bought a AIRCARE mini console humidifier. It’s larger than I figured which is fine. My music room is actually a 200 sq ft bedroom plus large closet. Here in southeast AZ humidity is low for many months, 10%-20% humidity. All my acoustic and electric guitars are in cases with Humidipaks and hygrometers and stored in the closet to make room for amplifiers, chairs and computer. The AIRCARE mini keeps the instruments at 40%-45%. The issue was when I uncase one or more guitars to play for a few hours the guitars hit the low humidity in the room. I needed the whole room to be 40% - 45% humidity. The AIRCARE mini console works excellent on low fan setting for constant 45% humidity. I preferred to buy a unit that didn’t have to work hard to achieve my goal. This unit could easily humidify a much larger room like say a master bedroom but not a whole house. The music stores in Tucson that sell high end acoustic guitars all have commercial humidifiers. Some bloggers think it’s not important to keep an electric guitar properly humidified but electric guitars can also be stressed by drying out over time. I’ve seen vintage jazz electrics here start having issues like binding become loose and tops dipping in. Bottom line this AIRCARE humidity works great and is a worthy investment for guitarists. A+

I purchased this to help aid in healing my dry hands that crack and bleed in the winter months. Summer months my hands are perfect with no cracking or bleeding. In the winter though, between washing dishes, giving kids baths, myself taking showers, and my furnace running in the winter months - my hands are raw, cracked, bleeding, and soar. I use globs of every hand cream imaginable to help ease the pain. If you have dry skin of any kind, this humidifier may help you.I would not say it is a complete cure, but it has given me a great deal of relief in my hands. They are just slightly cracked now and to look at them you cannot even tell they are slightly cracked. I still use hand cream, but only two to three times a day where as before I used hand cream 5 to 6 times a day. The soreness in my hands is gone! This is because they are not as dry, I do not itch them nearly as much, and they get the moisture from the humidifier putting it into my home.Now about my experience with the product itself...Regardless of what people say in their reviews, this device is very, and I mean very loud! You could not have it in a television room or entertainment room. On low, you can carry on a conversation and probably watch television but the fan noise would be noticeable if it is 6 feet away from you. If it was maybe 20 feet away you may not hear it as much on low. However, the device has 3 speeds past low and with each increase of speed, the fan blows much much louder. It just makes sense if you think about it. This unit is designed to humidify a 2500 square foot home. Do you think a tiny quiet fan can humidify that large of an area?I purchased a smaller humidifier for my bedroom and this particular one covers only 400 square foot. The fan is so small and silent that I can sleep without even hearing it. This whole house humidifier has to cover over 5 times that size - 400 * 5 = 2000 so yeah, it has a large fan in it that is loud. With that said though, I am more than willing to tolerate the inconvenience of a loud fan for the benefit that the device brings my hands - I LOVE IT!I leave mine set to the auto mode. This means it will run the fan very low if the humidity is close. It will automatically crank up the fan if it drops I think 3% below what you have it set at. For example, if you have it at 55%, and it drops to 52%, the fan will come on high and get it back to 55% then turn the fan back to low. So in my home I am hearing the fan go from low to high intermittently throughout the day. In my home, I am guessing this happens 3 to 4 times an hour. To get my home from 52% back to 55% takes around 1 minute in my home - your mileage may vary. I keep my thermostat set at 72 degrees but have very tight insulation.I literally just took it out of the box, it was fully assembled, and added water, turned it on, set the humidity to 55%, and that was it. It was a snap to get up and running. Some reviews mentioned struggling to put on the "feet" on the bottom of the unit - my unit came with them already on it.Filling up the water is a very easy task. It comes with a 2 gallon plastic jug that you fill with water then place it on the side of the unit. The water then comes out of the bottom of the plastic jug and into the bed of the unit. You repeat this fill/refill until the base of the unit is full and stops filling up. There is no way you can overfill it using the fill/refill method using the plastic jug. The design prevents overfilling. The base of the unit holds a little over 2 gallons and the plastic jug holds 2 gallons. It is actually a really cool concept... the 2 gallon jug stays full and as the water goes down in the base of the unit, water falls out of the plastic gallon into the bed so it can continue on humidifying your home.I've seen some reviews mention not needing to refill water for a week or longer. This really will depend on how well your home is insulated, how often your furnace runs, and what you have the humidity set at on the device. So your mileage will definitely vary. For me, I fill up the plastic jug twice daily. When I get up in the morning the base is full, but the 2 gallon plastic tub is empty so I refill the plastic jug. I also refill the plastic jug in the evening before bed.The unit only has three buttons on it - power on/off button, set humidity level button, and fan speed button - this button cycles with each pres between auto, and fan speed 1 through 4. The faster the fan blows, the louder it is in the home.Lastly, some reviews had mentioned that it is made out of cheap plastic. It definitely is a thinner plastic design, however, I don't have any plans of bashing it with a baseball bat or dropping it on the floor any time soon lol. It is sitting on a table in my living room just doing what it is supposed to do. I don't have any issues with the quality of the plastic used on the device.I give this device a 5 because it does what it is intended to do - humidify a 2500 square foot home. I also love the ease of use - it is effortless to get up and running. I also love the design of the 2 gallon jug and it continuously dropping water into the base of the unit as water is needed. That is great engineering.

I've owned this humidifier for a couple of months and have decided, that as with most electronic items, you get what you pay for.I spent $99 (free Amazon shipping), which was about the best price I could find for a humidifier of this type. I shopped around a lot before buying this, so I thought I'd share in detail what I've learned after using it in varying weather conditions and temperatures.Description:It's cheaply constructed, as many reviewers have commented. The plastic is thin and a bit flimsy, though all the pieces seem to fit together well. However, my kids could definitely not play ball near it. One good kick would do major damage. However, it's on wheels, which is convenient, as I've moved it to several locations attempting to get the best results. Overall size is a bit smaller than many of the console humidifiers I looked at--so that was a plus.It's composed of a water bottle on the side, a cover which contains the electronics in the top, and a bottom tray that holds the water (overall the unit holds about 4 gallons) as well as a filter that wicks up the water and absorbs any minerals in it. In the center of the tray is a float mechanism. As the float settles to the bottom, an indicator will flash "F" for "FILL ME!" If set on auto, the humidifier will continue to run so as to dry out the filter and prevent mold growth--then it will turn off. The humidistat is located in the power cord near the plug. As a result, what the humidifier indicates as the humidity is at least 5 percentage points away from reality. For example, it may indicate that the humidity near the unit is 45%, but 10 feet away, my hygrometer indicates that the actually humidity is 40%. If I move my hygrometer upstairs, the difference is more like 10 percentage points. Our house is about 2500 square feet, which is what this unit is advertised as being able to handle, but ideally, we'd need two--one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Perhaps it would work better in a ranch-style home.Three buttons control the functions: a power button, a fan speed button, and a humidity button. The fan speed button allows you to set the fan speed manually (4 speeds plus auto), and the humidity button allows you to set the humidity level in increments of 5 percentage points, from 25 to 65 percent. Though this humidifier advertises itself as being quiet, it is NOT. In the highest two fan speeds, with the humidifier in the same room, it's impossible to watch TV or hold a conversation without yelling or cranking up the volume on the TV.So, here's what I've learned and how we've adapted:How high the humidity will get in the house definitely depends upon the outside temperature, and that fact is indicated in the manual. In the single digit temps we've been having, the manual recommends about a 20 to 25% level of humidity. However, that doesn't do much for our scratchy throats or dry wood floors, so what we do is crank it on the highest or second highest setting at night, in a hallway, when and where the fan noise won't disturb anyone, and the most possible humidity will get into the air. During the day, we set the humidity to 40 or 45% on auto, so the humidifier kicks on and off as needed to maintain this. At this rate, I fill the humidifier twice a day (first thing in the morning and around midnight), meaning that it takes two trips with the bottle to the sink to fill it each time. It's easy to fill, though--I just lay it on the divider in the middle of my sink, aim the tap at the opening and do something else while it fills. I include one capful of bacteriostat solution with each filling (although a capful per gallon is recommended, I just use a capful per 4 gallons) and that has done the trick of keeping mold out of the filter. Be sure to add the bacteriostat at the end, or you'll end up with foam everywhere, and wear gloves when using the bacteriostat--that stuff is toxic.Also, I flip the filter every morning. Yup, EVERY morning. We have hard water, and flipping the filter this often keeps the edges pliable, moist, and able to absorb water. In addition, once every week or so, I soak the filter in vinegar (just lay it in a dishpan and pour vinegar over it to cover) for several hours, and that takes out any deposits that have built up, greatly extending the life of the filter. And I don't have to use fresh vinegar every time--I just pour the used vinegar back into the bottle and reuse it until it's quite dirty. A final item I always check is the float. It malfunctioned once, and the humidifier "thought" it needed to be filled though it was completely full. Thus, it wouldn't allow me to change the fan settings. So I always make sure that the float is able to move freely up and down.Overall, I feel that we got our money's worth with this humidifier. We were on a budget, so I don't mind the extra work it takes to maintain and "baby" this one along.Should anything malfunction, I'll be sure to edit this review.